Le Flirt

A man from our building flirted with me MOST severely last week. 

He was a clean-cut, good-looking fellow - the sort who lifts weights six times a week and wears a sleeveless t-shirt to prove it, and carefully gels his hair so that when your eyes finally drift away from his biceps and wander up to his face, you are assured that he takes care of the rest of himself, too.

He caught me in the lobby.

          "Well, helloooo." He said to me suggestively, catching at my purse. "Didn't  we run into each other yesterday?"

Polite confusion.

           "The day before, perhaps?  Oh, come.  I know YOU Remember. There was  a - "

           "Of course!  There was that - "

           "Yes, the baby!!  You DO remember!" 

How could I forget?  The two of us coming in the front door, and across the lobby a baby in a pram doing its level best to level the building through sheer acoustical horror.  The howls echoed off of the polished stone floor and the polished plaster walls and we had waggled our eyebrows at each other, attempting to convey our mutual dismay and horror and headache and then we'd each gotten the hell out of there. Separately.

            According to this fellow, what we'd had was a deep, intellectual meeting of minds and souls and the loss was mine - a deep, soul-bending, heart-scaring loss -  that I had not recognized the communion we had shared.  It was very moving.   He flexed his biceps for me and tilted his head so that light glinted from the windows and off of his white teeth.

          "It's nice and quiet here, now that the... babies... are all upstairs, don't you think?"  He asked with a polite leer.

I nodded in agreeable assent.  

He pursed his perfect lips.  "And now that it's just us - "

The  door to the parking yard opened and our concierge walked in.  

          "Were you needing anything?"  He said, and tilted his head quizzically at the beefcake.

My swain darted a trapped look at the concierge, then at me, then back to the concierge and mumbled  "M'toilet's backed up again."

And blushed deep red and fled.

O Varlet! Base Coward!  When two Souls are met in Communion, surely they can overcome the ignominy of sewer backwash and know that base matter is but a Proving Ground for Souls!